Serenity’s a Smarter Space Opera

For a sci-fi movie, Serenity doesn't showcase much fancy science. In this space adventure, the most impressive technologies are a broken-down starship and a couple of standard-issue holograms. Even the weapons are old-school — the ship's captain slings his six-shooter, John Wayne style, in a holster.

Good writing, of course, predates the silicon age. But with most sci-fi, horror and fantasy films semiliterate at best, decent dialogue seems like a technical innovation.

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Anyone who knows the work of Serenity's creator, Joss Whedon, won't be surprised by the film's clever, ping-ponging banter. Whedon, the mad scientist behind the cult faves Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, has built a huge fan base by writing smart TV.

His career is filled with successes — an Emmy nomination for Buffy, an Oscar nod for his screenplay for Toy Story. But Whedon also had one brutal failure, the TV series Firefly, which died an ugly, lonely death after one truncated season on Fox.

Whedon refused to let Firefly go gentle into that dark, network-TV night. He repackaged the show as a feature film and pitched it to Universal Studios. And that's how Serenity, which uses the same characters, spaceship and cast as Firefly, came to be.

The movie is nearly as soulful, charming and funny as Firefly. The story tracks Mal, a former rebel soldier whose troops and morale were crushed by the Alliance, a group of "civilized" planets that won a vicious civil war with the renegade independent planets at the edges of the universe.

Since then Mal has become a low-rent outlaw, recruiting a cast of lovable misfits to crew his "boat," a disintegrating spaceship named (ironically) Serenity. To make ends meet, the Serenity crew knocks over bars and shuttles passengers around the galaxy.

Serenity's human cargo at the beginning of the film includes Simon, a doctor; and River, his creepy teenage sister. River, we learn in the opening sequence, is a fugitive from the Alliance, which spent big bucks developing her as a psychic weapon.

Serenity unfolds as an extended chase scene. Alliance ships and assassins are trying to corner Serenity and kill River; Mal and his crew are looking for new places to hide and a way to permanently end the hunt.

The movie is Whedon's first feature film, and it's weighed down by its narrative. Though Whedon knows exactly how to construct TV shows, they are a different species from movies. The pace of network television is dictated by commercial breaks, with spurts of action and minor denouements every six or eight minutes. A feature-length movie is more of a long-distance event, with a suitable reward — a big idea is revealed, order is imposed — at the end.

Serenity doesn't satisfy the way a great genre film does. It lacks a satisfying payoff, and relies on a series of dopey plot devices. But Whedon does manage to entertain us, start to finish, and it's obvious that's what he likes doing best. The director doesn't take himself or genre filmmaking especially seriously, and Serenity is a playful mix of space operas, Westerns and thrillers, with some Buffy-esque spin-kick-chop fight scenes tossed in.

At the same time, Whedon clearly cares about his characters, and Serenity never devolves into parody.

As a writer of dialogue, Whedon is a superstar, and, unlike other genre screenwriters, he does more than provide a few good catchphrases. Wisecracks, playful banter, metaphor, irony, double entendres, even quiet, emotionally weighted moments — Whedon does it all.

Serenity's verbal fireworks help compensate for its clumsy special effects. The chases, explosions and battles are choppy and confusing and look a bit cheap. Using Hollywood's warped abacus, it's pretty clear that $45 million — Serenity's reported budget — isn't enough money to create blockbuster visuals.

Maybe that's for the better. Rather than spending months working with the Orphanage or Industrial Light and Magic to blow up stuff in slow motion, Whedon invested energy in refining Serenity's human elements.

And it's those human elements — the undeniable chemistry between the crew, the tense standoffs between good guys and bad, Mal wrestling with his conscience — that make Serenity work. This film is intended for grown-up adults and smart teenagers, and the story never seems dictated by what might be called the action-figure imperative — the need for a movie to drive toy and video-game sales.

At film's end, Serenity once again flies off into the wild blue yonder, one crew member short, but well situated for a sequel. Here's hoping Whedon can keep this boat in the air.

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